


The Sight of Salt Water Unbounded

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Pirates, Low Chaos, Major Spoilers For The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches, Post Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:39:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Who hath desired the Sea?—the sight of salt water unbounded—</i>
  <br/><i>The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded?</i>
</p>
<p>Billie Lurk's ship is halfway to Serkonos when the pirates board.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tricycleamoving](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricycleamoving/gifts).



> Birthday fic for [Templars](http://annielionheart.co.vu/) , who asked for Billie/Cecelia as lesbian pirates. It's late enough to practically double up as a Christmas gift too, so Merry Christmas everyone! Last warning though, I'm not joking about the DLC spoilers, proceed at your own discretion. Updates will be daily for the next five days until it's complete.
> 
> The title and verse in the summary come from Rudyard Kipling's "The Sea and the Hills". Massive thank you to [Rastaban/Balerion](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Rastaban/pseuds/Rastaban) for the beta reading, you're an absolute miracle.

Billie Lurk's ship is halfway to Serkonos when the pirates board.

 

She was asleep when they were first sighted, dreaming the usual medley of blood-red, garden-green and shrine-blue, grey for Dunwall's stones and brown for the eyes that blink tiredly back during her morning ablutions. The days are long, unending like the horizon, and the salt sea air saps her strength in ways the fog never managed. Billie works hard and sleeps deeply, but she wakes to the shouts from the deck. _They're headed our way_ , and _weapons at the ready,_ and _they don't mean to take no prisoners, arm yourselves_!

 

She blinks at the wood of her cabin ceiling, thinks a moment, then smiles.

 

Piracy it is, then. It's not as if she had any other pressing business to attend to. Serkonos will still be there if she changes her mind.

 

Billie hangs back in the shadows and watches her smugglers fall quickly to greed and jagged blades, wincing at shoddy footwork and weak defensive stances more than the spray of blood and shatter of bone. She's no hero. If she were then maybe she'd have joined in, put her powers and blade and skill to good use; they'd have won, and easily. She might have got her money for the passage refunded, if the captain survived long enough to decide she probably wasn't the wisest person to extort.

 

She is no hero. She might, however, make a decent pirate.

 

Both sides tire long before her patience runs dry; Billie steps out unto the open, gunpowder dust in her nostrils and brown hair. Her coat stands out even in the dark, and when she Transverses behind the pirate leader, there are shouts all around. _Witch. Heretic._ She finds she's rather partial to the fearful quiver in every accusation. Fear means they're paying attention.

 

"My name is Lurk." She lifts her voice to be heard over the _thump_ of the captain's body hitting the deck. "Previously of Dunwall, now of nowhere in particular. You've all but sunk this ship, so I'll take yours instead. You'll find me harsh, but fair, so long as you don't seek to challenge me. Any objections?"

 

She kills the two that protest and the rest come quietly. Something about their expressions, cowed, half terror half worship, makes her soul sing. She will be their queen. Above them already, and with her powers there is little chance that anyone will challenge her, or succeed if they do. She'll dance around their bullets, their swords. If there is poison aboard, they will soon find her to be immune. They will _kneel-_

 

and then Billie shakes herself, the haze falling from her mind like water shed by a sodden hound. She blinks at her new crew, at the dead captain, at the creaking, quaking vessel she'd hoped would free her from the _real_ witch. The hull is pierced, she'd guess. They have time; not much, but she's damned if the first raid under her command doesn't yield a decent amount of loot. Greed will keep the crew tied to her more tightly than fear.

 

There is a voice in her mind that whispers, _Careful, Billie. These men are treacherous. They'll butcher you while you sleep if you don't train them when you can. Kill a few more. Bury their flesh in flowerbeds-_

"Tie up the survivors," Billie says loudly. "The smugglers can go in their life rafts with whatever food we don't need for ourselves; we can't be too far from some Serkonan Isle or other. Search the ship for other passengers. I can't have been the only one, and maybe they'll have coin to exchange for their lives, or family who do. _Move!_ " They move, of course. She knew they would. Let the witch whisper away; Billie doesn't need her advice any more, any more than she needs Daud's. Maybe in time they'll both fade. Maybe they'll sink under the waters and be swallowed up by the great leviathans. She plans to live.

 

They rob the smugglers and then watch from a distance as the battered ship sinks slowly. Someone brings Billie a bottle of the whiskey they 'salvaged', watches with a approval as she swigs it. "Thanks", she says absently, and only just avoids calling him Rulfio, or Rinaldo, or Thomas. Names will come later. For now she fixes a spyglass to her eye and watches the dark outlines of distant smugglers rowing for their lives in too-small lifeboats. Cursing her, no doubt. Cursing the day they took her coin and let her aboard. Maybe cursing themselves too, for not posting a better lookout that night.

 

Billie tries the captain's hat in the privacy of his- of _her_ cabin, and tilts her head in the mirror. It's...interesting. Totally lacking in functionality, and it'll give her no advantages aside from perhaps a small swagger (it's dashing and ludicrous, and makes her look a right overdressed fool). Daud would have sneered at it.

"That's just _your_ opinion, old man," she tells the mirror. "Why not appreciate the finer things in life for once? I like it." And, because the disapproval lingers in some corner of her mind, she adds, "I'll take it off when I need to fight. I'm not stupid." _Not like you were, to trust a snake like me_. She can't tell if the thought is her own. It's so hard to tell, still. Will the witch never let her go?

 

_She dreams that night. Remembers. The sheets are cool and the Manor's old and rotted ceiling lets in light to dapple across her stomach, thighs, shoulders. She lifts a lazy hand to the sunlight and watches it play across her fingers._

_"Just a business meeting between us Void-touched, you said. Not like any business meeting I've ever been to." Billie raises her head, and drops it back to the pillow when Delilah hisses at her. "I still don't see why you can't find someone else to pose for you. I'm a busy woman, I have things to do. Contracts to fulfil, targets to research. I can't afford to lay about all day." She closes her eyes, just for a moment, and lets the sun's heat warm her bones. Languorous, cat-like, Billie stretches. "At least pretend you're interested in talking business; what am I supposed to tell Daud I did all afternoon?"_

_"Have you never lied to him?" Delilah's pencil darts across the paper, and her eyes dart too, from Billie to whatever image is taking shape before her. "Are you like a child, that he must be aware of your every movement, and every encounter? Must he meet all your friends before he lets you keep them?"_

_"We're not friends," Billie says, though her skin still smells of roses and drying sweat, and she feels more friendly than usual. "I don't know what we are, but I don't need friends. Certainly not you."_

_"Am I too strange? You wouldn't be the first to think so." Delilah's eyes linger on Billie's face, leaving her tingling with...something. Embarrassment, probably, though she's a woman grown and ought to be past that kind of thing._

_"Strange is one way of putting it. Mad is another. Or maybe..."_

_"'Driven', is the word you're looking for. I won't be caged, and I won't be forgotten. I won't allow what is mine to be stolen from me. Is that madness?"_

_"Depends on what you're trying to protect. Reclaim. Whatever it is, I'm not interested unless you plan to get in my way. That's a bad idea." Billie's fingers twitch at her sides, rubbing irritably against the sheets. She gets this way, if she goes too long without a weapon in hand. It will pass. She doesn't need a blade to cling to, like some child with a favourite toy. She controls her body; it is her tool._

_"Such a strong will," Delilah murmurs. "You are wasted at Daud's side. Why should you walk in a man's shadow, when you are already every bit as strong as he? Surely you deserve better than this...indignity. I look at you, Billie Lurk, and I see a queen." She turns the sketch, and now Billie sees. Sees herself, eyes, nose and mouth, same as usual, except that they are not. Delilah has made her regal somehow, filled with might and arrogance. This is not a woman who kneels._

_Billie swallows, wordless, and Delilah gives a soft chuckle. "It's incomplete, of course. We have only just begun here. But I think the finished product will be well worth the effort it takes to get there. You won't be my masterpiece, but I believe you'll be a wonder nonetheless. I'm capable of so many things; just you wait and see."_

_"It's just a painting," Billie grumbles, but her heart isn't in it."I don't even know what I'm still doing here. Maybe I won't come back." She will though, and Delilah's smile says she knows it. Knows so many things that she shouldn't, about Billie and her past. Knows that Billie's had so little beauty in her life, so little frivolity, that she'll come back. Nobody's ever wanted to paint her before. Nobody's ever said she could be a work of art, and in so many colourful ways. Billie shifts on the sheets, feels the ghostly, satisfied ache between her legs, and thinks that it felt like worship._

_She could get used to that._


	2. Chapter 2

The pounding on her door wakes her, sweat-soaked and shaky, tangled in her blankets. Billie tosses them aside and sits up, furious.

"Outsider take you, what is it you want?" Her voice rasps, hoarse with sleep; she sounds more like Daud every day. "If this isn't urgent-"

 

"Stowaway, Captain!" her first mate shouts through the door. One of these days she'll learn the man's name; they've been her crew almost two weeks, and it's high time she did- but there is a part of her that expects a mutiny any day, or at least a murder attempt, and learning names is a waste of time if she's just going to kill them anyway.

 

They took to her remarkably well, these pirates in their battered steamship (converted from whaling to warfare, a change she much approves of). Her predecessor can't have been well-liked; she doesn't ask, of course, because that might be misinterpreted as insecurity. Or maybe it was the loot they found aboard the smugglers' vessel; whale oil, cured meat, crystals, odds and ends to be sold on the Serkonan black markets. And coin, of course. Plenty of it. _That_ went down predictably well.

 

Billie tugs on her red coat, gun at one hip and sword at the other, the captain's hat perched jauntily on her head. She practiced that. Not out of vanity of course, but the hat adds a nice finish to her air of authority. Daud would have understood. He's the one who acquired the red coats in the first place, useless for camouflage as they are. He told her some lie about "hiding the blood more efficiently", as if she'd actually fall for a line like that.

"A stowaway, you said?" She strides at her first mate's side (what _is_ his name? Something Serkonan; he's from the South, with skin as dark as hers and bright black eyes that always land on the costliest thing in the room) scowls briefly at the whale oil lantern he carries. They need lighting at night; she can't dispute this, but she's seen the damage such lanterns can do. _Used_ them on several occasions, when she really wanted to be remembered. Their ship is a sturdy thing, grey metal hull and engines that roar like wild beasts, but still she worries. Does it ever pass? Will she ever really leave the land behind her?

 

"Looks like. She's a sly little thing, cap'n, and no mistake. Wouldn'ta even noticed her, but she got unlucky. Caught her goin' through the food supplies; she says she wanted an apple. As if we just had barrels of 'em lyin' around..."

 

"Not a sailor, then," Billie says thoughtfully. "I wonder, did she come aboard from the smugglers' vessel with me? Sly indeed, if nobody noticed until now."

 

"Like a mouse," her first mate agrees. "Squeaks like one too. We could toss her over if you wanted. With some cheese of her own, if the sharks don't get it first-"

 

"We'll see. Where is this mouse of ours?"

 

Billie is pleased to see the stowaway was left largely unharmed in the meantime. Her crew chose to send for their captain before doing anything _rash_ , and that speaks volumes about the hold she has on them already.

 

The woman herself is small; truly a mouse of a thing, with flaming hair and prominent cheekbones. She clings to a tatty grey hat with her bony fingers, twisting the material this way and that. She doesn't look up as Billie approaches.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles, almost to herself. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause trouble, I was just so _hungry_ and you have _so much_ , and you've never noticed before- sorry. Please don't hurt me. I can work-"

 

"Hush," Billie snaps, and the woman looks up, startled.

 

"Oh, but- you're a _girl_?" And, wilting under Billie's fierce scowl, "Oh no! I never meant any offense, truly! I just never thought- because Callista said they wouldn't even let her _aboard_ the whaling ships, let alone work on them, and I thought- but I guess I was wrong. I'm sorry. Please-"

 

"How did you get aboard?" Billie asks, before the woman can apologise herself into a state of numb terror. "Where did you come from? And what kind of...utter _fool_ are you, to stow away on a pirate vessel?"

 

"I had to," the woman says. "The other one was sinking, and you left- I didn't want to stay with the smugglers, I knew they'd just kill me so I wouldn't slow them down and eat their food."

 

"You came from Dunwall?"

 

"I couldn't stay. Havelock and Martin and Pendleton...after what they did to Lydia and Wallace, I had to go. There were Watchmen everywhere, but I think Corvo would have known how to handle them. I hope so, Callista was still stuck in that tower. Not really sure what happened to Piero. There was nothing I could do, so I ran. And I had all the money I could find, from the till and Lydia's stash; she didn't need it as much as me, so I took it to buy passage. But the boats all look the same to me." She drops her gaze back to Billie's boots, tugging at the hat in her hands. It'll come apart soon, if she keeps doing that. Billie almost takes it off her, to put the thing on the woman's head where it won't be torn apart, but it seems she's not quite done yet. "I was going to just choose one at random and hope the Outsider smiled on me, but then I saw you. And you seemed like you knew where you were going, so I watched for a while, and then...I just followed you aboard. I think they were loading supplies or something, it wasn't too hard to make sure they didn't see me."

 

"And then the pirates arrived," Billie says, and the woman nods miserably.

 

"I just wanted to be somewhere else. I didn't even know where we were going for the first week, but even Pandyssia would have been better." She looks back up, shoulders hunched, and adds, "I'm Cecelia, by the way. If it matters. I'm not so sure it does, but I guess that's up to you now."

 

Billie takes in the scuffed, bony hands and darting eyes, twitching like sparrows. This Cecelia crept unnoticed aboard a smuggling vessel and stayed hidden for several weeks; she wasn't seen boarding the second ship either, though that at least might have something to do with the chaos and weak moonlight. She has...not skill, certainly not, because skill comes from work and effort and _training_ , but it may be that she has promise. And Billie has never been wasteful.

 

"Alright," she says, and everyone in the room jumps to attention, Cecelia included. "For now, she stays. It's always a good idea to have someone around who's good at sneaking into places they shouldn't be. I expect we'll find a use for her soon enough."

 

"Thank you," Cecelia stammers, and Billie shrugs. She deserves no _thanks_ for making the obvious choice, the best choice for her people and her ship. If she has erred, it was done in the name of future profit and is probably excusable. There is no sentiment in her decision, however much gratitude she sees in Cecelia's bright blue eyes.

 

"Welcome aboard, Cecelia. You say you can work? I'll see that you deliver on that. Here you will _earn_ your place, or we'll leave you ashore the nearest island to fend for yourself. Let's just hope you prove worth keeping." Daud would have done a better job of it, she knows. Recruitment speeches were always something he was good at; a careful blend of threats and promises, bribes and witchcraft. Shame she never paid more attention when he gave them. She might have done a better job of it.

 

Delilah's recruitment speeches were far more insidious. Billie knows this, just as she is well aware that she herself fell victim to honeyed words and false sympathy. The witch knew her trade, and knew it well, but Billie should have seen what was happening. Didn't she _want_ the Outsider's gaze, the gift of power from the source itself instead of Daud's leavings? She has no right to complain if Delilah used it against her. She should have _seen_.

_"He's changed," she says idly, eyes fixed to the wooden beams above her. Sunlight again, warm and welcoming; her meetings with Delilah are always the same. For all the fog and misery of Dunwall, she still ferrets out the odd good days, like nuggets of gold in sewer filth, and presents them to Billie as gifts. There is always sunlight, just as there are always pots of paint and covered canvasses and odd, indecipherable sketches that Billie is not permitted to look at too closely._

_"How so?" Delilah is behind an easel now, paint on her wrists and the fingers that dab so delicately with a brush. She hasn't bothered to dress, as usual. There is a part of Billie that envies this woman's comfort with her surroundings. Though knowing Delilah, it's probably arrogance more than anything._

_"I'm not sure. Something about the Empress...he keeps saying she was different somehow. As if we've never killed off nobles, or women for that matter. It wasn't anything we've never done before, but it changed him. Weakened him." The words spill out so easily these days. Once she treated the witch with nothing less than absolute caution, the healthy dose of suspicion that has saved her life on numerous occasions. Now she's positively chatty, and she doesn't know why. It's not sentiment. They fuck, and then Delilah paints her. That isn't sentiment. But still she talks. "Whatever his illness, I can't seem to find a cure. I'm starting to think it might not be worth the hassle of trying any further. Maybe the old man is done for. Maybe it's time he handed over the reins to someone new."_

_Delilah mixes reds with careful flicks of her bony wrist. "Like you? It would be for the best; I've often wondered how it is that someone with so much talent, who has worked so very hard, is happy with second place. Why should you not lead? If Daud is weakened as you say, it seems only wise to take his place. His time is done. Yours is only beginning." She lifts her eyes from the paints to study Billie once again, though by now she must know every curve and contour of Billie's shape by heart. But this is a different kind of thoughtful on her face. "I could help you, if you wanted. You know I have powers of my own, powers I share freely with my sisters, just as Daud shares his gifts with the Whalers. I could give you an advantage. Would you like that?"_

_And Billie hungers. Lists every little flaw and failing she's seen in Daud over the last few months and finds the total much too long. It's true, he should have stepped down. He should have put the needs of the group over his own desire for power. The group comes first. Daud is wrong to tread on her aspirations, and if she fights him...well, it's only fair. Just. She deserves to lead the Whalers. This is her life, and he is taking it from her-_

"Miss Billie? Captain? Wake up, you're talking in your sleep again. Billie?"

 

She stirs and finds Cecelia standing over her, eyes wide and worried in the dark. "Sorry," the other woman says guiltily. "But last time you said to wake you if it happened again. I was worried you _wouldn't_ , the way you were tossing and turning; it was like you couldn't even feel me shaking you. If you hadn't woken just now I was going to try a pitcher of water, like Lydia used to give me when I overslept. _That_ always worked."

 

"I'm grateful it didn't come to that." Billie sits up in her narrow bunk,  swings her legs over the side and runs a hand through her tangled hair. It's getting long; she'll need to do something about that, or ask Cecelia to help her. Can't afford that kind of distraction in battle. "What was I saying?"

 

Cecelia hands her a cloth, dampened in the water jug nearby, and watches as Billie scrubs at her cheeks and forehead. "I'm not sure, it wasn't clear. Scary though. You mumbled a lot, and I caught a few things, something about witches and roses, and a painting; you sounded so scared. I think that was the worst of it."

 

"A word of advice, and one that I pray you'll never need." Billie places the damp cloth over the back of her neck and closes her eyes. "Never consort with witches. Never speak to them, never listen to anything they say, however grand their promises. They'll _drain_ you. Hollow you out like a puppet and put their words in your mouth, so you never know if what you say is your own thought, or theirs. Never let them paint you, especially. Once they've captured your soul, it's theirs to play with. Mould. Somehow." When she opens her eyes, Cecelia is watching her. Not afraid, as by rights she should be. If anything there is understanding, and maybe a little pity; it doesn't irk as much as it once would have done.

 

There are worse things in the world than pity.

 

"How did you escape?" Cecelia asks. She seems to accept the idea of Delilah's magic without question; she has yet to see Billie using her powers, so either she thinks Billie mad, or believes her wholeheartedly. Both are frightening thoughts.

 

"I didn't. Not really. When she was done with me, when I _failed_ her, she tossed me aside like so much garbage. I'll never see her again, but I still hear her at times in the back of my mind. And in my dreams. Always, she is in my dreams. I expect that would please her greatly if she knew. The bitch always did like being the centre of attention." That's a guess; she doesn't know for sure. She never really knew Delilah half as well as she thought.

 

"You're very brave," Cecelia says. There is no lie on her face, in her eyes. No pity either. _What_ there is, Billie can't tell, except that it makes Cecelia twitchier than usual. "You survived, and that's what counts. You made a new life, with new people and...and new adventures. Eventually everything else will fade, like it always does. You'll be free. You just have to wait a while."

 

"I'm good at waiting. I did a lot of it, in my old life."

 

"Go back to sleep, Billie. Captain. I'll wake you again if the dreams come back." She will, too. Cecelia has spent every night since her discovery in Billie's cabin, tucked into a nest of blankets in a corner of the room. She could hardly have bunked down with the rest of the crew, however obedient they are when Billie is present. They are still men.

 

Billie isn't sure if the obedience is a result of superstition or mere chance, but it irritates her either way. They're due to dock in several days, at a cove in the Serkonan Isles where her crew tells her they'll be able to sell their loot, and there Billie plans to do some recruiting. It can't be so hard to find women like herself, hungry for open waters and new horizons.

 

She's still not sure what to make of this mythical "pirate city", though it seems unlikely that the crew would lie where coin is concerned.

 

Cecelia can come with her when they dock, she decides. They'll find her new clothes, a weapon she can put her trust in. Something small and sharp should suit her. If she hopes to stay, she'd better earn her keep in more ways than scrubbing and cooking the occasional adequate meal. Billie has taken to the idea of piracy with great enthusiasm; given time, Cecelia too will see the appeal.


	3. Chapter 3

The pirate city is an anthill, abuzz with swarms of strange people in stranger clothing, as many of them dripping wealth as filthy and clad in tattered rags. Billie doesn't catch the city's name; three different people tell her three different names, none of them in any language she is familiar with. And in a way she prefers to leave it that way. Can the witch haunt her mind if she walks the streets of a place with no name? With a thousand names, maybe? She'd spit on superstition were it not for the fact that it doesn't care whether or not she _believes_. It happens either way. Can't hurt to take precautions.

 

She gathers her crew on the deck before they disembark, producing a small, sharp knife from a pocket and holding it aloft.

 

"I know we're in a pirate city, and maybe some of you are thinking it might not be so safe to leave the ship with a skeleton crew. Well, I've taken care of that already. You can count on me to make sure we're never robbed." It's the work of minutes to carve the Outsider's odd mark into the wood of the deck, and maybe it's not the prettiest thing in the world (not a patch on Delilah's sketches) but it'll do the job.

 

"It's funny," Cecelia says quietly at her elbow, "the Overseers were always saying how bad the Outsider is, and how we should keep well away from him, but they never mentioned he protects ships. I guess I must have missed that sermon. I never went to all that many, never had the time."

 

"Hush." Billie watches her crew sort themselves and the stolen goods they mean to sell into the rowboats, alert for any signs of mutiny to come. There is some fear in their eyes, but not as much as she expected. Some awe as well, but what makes her most uncomfortable is the _pride_. She can't work out where it's coming from. Didn't she kill their captain and steal their ship? Why should they be proud of their new heretic witch leader? "It won't do a thing against thieves, but that's not the point," she says absently. "I just wanted to deter anyone _here_ who was maybe thinking about trying their luck while I'm ashore."

 

" _Oh_. That's clever."

 

"Hmm."

 

"But I don't think you have anything to worry about," Cecelia continues. "I listen a lot, when they don't notice that I'm there. They think you're lucky. Though they're also a bit scared you'll turn them into slimy things in their beds if they annoy you. They think you'll bring them coin and good fortune, by being _bad_ for everyone else. It makes sense when you think about it."

 

"Look how far I've come; worshipped by pirates in the hopes that I'll be less unfortunate for them than their enemies. Just what I always wanted." But there is a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, and she reaches up to straighten her hat a little. She's stuck with the thing. The crew have come to associate it with her as much as they did their previous captain, and her head would feel bare without. Too late to get rid of it.

 

"I don't know about you, but I've a fancy for something that isn't stale water or what passes for spirits aboard this great hulking lump. How does a pub sound?" She asks despite knowing that Cecelia will come wherever she goes, regardless of whether she wants to or not. The woman is her shadow, her constant companion in the waking world, and sometimes even while she sleeps. Those dreams are pleasant, void of roses and paints and pale, sharp cheekbones. Cecelia has never harmed her in dreams.

 

Nor does she ever argue, and that is becoming a problem. She'll agree to the pub because she doesn't dare stay on the ship, and she certainly wouldn't wander off alone once reach the shore.

 

"You're allowed your own opinion, you know," Billie says. "If you want to hunt for trinkets or foods to remind you of home, just say so. I don't have anywhere better to be."

 

Cecelia shrugs. She's wearing her battered grey cap again, pulled low over her eyes so she doesn't have to look at people. "That's kind, but I'm happy wherever you're going. Adventures are lovely in the songs, but I don't think I'd like to go looking for one on my own. You'll find us one and I'll follow you."

 

 _Outsider take me_ , Billie thinks, leading the way to the last of the rowboats. She shoves a crate off the seat so Cecelia can squeeze in at her side, and waves to the crewmembers remaining aboard. They drew the short straw, but she intends to be here several days. They'll get their turns at the pubs and brothels. And she has crates of Boyle crystals to sell.

 

Evening finds Billie and her shadow easing their way through a crowded pub, drinks in hand and hidden pockets stuffed with coin. Haggling is all well and good, but Billie lacks the temperament required in decent merchants, and in the end it was just easier to agree with the price on offer and then Transverse behind the dealers and help herself to their coin when they weren't looking. Inelegant, and Daud would have disapproved, but Billie is no longer a Whaler. She is a pirate with a crew to take care of and she's not about to let some black-market scoundrel swindle her.

 

Every table in sight is full. Billie scowls around the bar, wishing for an extra inch or two on her boots. There is nobody she feels particularly inclined to share table space with. Cecelia presses up against her back, and Billie realises with a start that the other woman is standing guard while she's distracted. Useless, of course, given that she can barely manage to hold a knife the right way, but the thought is almost touching.

 

The crowd parts slightly; Billie freezes in place, her eyes widening in disbelief. It can't be. She came to this place for the sake of never having to see another familiar face for as long as she lives, but there is no forgetting those scarred features with their filed-down teeth and mess of stringy hair. _Damn_.

 

The woman spots her before she can move away, breaking into a gruesome grin over her mug and beckoning. Billie mutters a curse under her breath.

 

"Looks like I've found an old friend," she says over her shoulder to Cecelia. The other woman glances around nervously, her own mug held close to her chest.

 

"Have you? That's lucky, I was getting kind of worried about the way some of these people are looking at us. I knew I should have brought the broom with me, or maybe a club of some kind. Lydia used to keep one under the bar for when guests got a little rowdy..." Billie nods in the direction of her waiting companion at her table, throwing an arm around Cecelia's shoulders as they shove through the crowd. Can't be too careful, and she doesn't plan to let anyone separate them in here. Several have already tried. Billie sent them home with broken toes, and Cecelia was none the wiser.

 

"Never thought I'd see you again," she says as they reach the table, and Lizzy Stride grins up at her, gesturing to the empty chairs. There is nobody else seated with her. Billie isn't the slightest bit surprised.

 

Cecelia pulls her chair as close to Billie's as it will go; a wise precaution, but it makes them the target of a leer from Lizzy, and Billie could have done without _that_ particular view.

 

"Well, she ain't Golden Cat material, but I guess we've all fallen in these hard times," Lizzy says. She takes a pull from her mug and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. "She charging you by the hour or what?"

 

"Um- no, it's not like that, not at all," Cecelia begins, while Billie says, "Shut your damn mouth unless you've got anything useful to say." And then she adds, "This is Cecelia. She's a vital part of my crew, the sneakiest thief you'll find in all of Gristol. So you'd better show her the respect she deserves, or I might just have to _take_ it from you. Nobody insults my crew."

 

At her side, Cecelia gives a soft, "Oh." Billie pretends not to hear, in favour of fixing Lizzy with what she hopes is an intimidating look. It's hard to tell, what with the captain's hat changing her appearance somewhat. She refuses to take it off, however crowded the bar, but it's only now that she wonders if the lighting makes it look a little...well, less imposing than usual.

 

Cecelia would have told her if that was the case.

 

Lizzy doesn't seem offended by the tone. "That how it is then, huh? Captain Billie Lurk? I heard what happened with you and Daud, but I never thought I'd find you in a place like this. What's your trade these days? You form your very own little band of assassins? Do you get them to call you Master like he does?"

 

"Piracy, actually." Billie sips her drink and tries not to spit it back out. She's had some bad beer in her time, but this might just take the prize. Outsider knows what goes into it. Though Cecelia might; the woman took one sniff of her mug and gently pushed it a few inches away with a fingertip. Shame Billie didn't take notice of the unspoken warning. Shame she can't work out how to get Cecelia to _speak_ , half the time.

 

Lizzy whistles through her teeth. "Pirate captain, is it? Suits you. Love the hat, by the way, real subtle. So you got yourself a ship then?"

 

"Yes," Cecelia pipes up. "She stole it off the old captain with heretic magic. That's what the crew says, anyway. She won't show me."

 

"Because you scare like a rabbit, and I don't want you falling overboard in fright," Billie says.

 

"But that's silly, I know you wouldn't hurt me."

 

 _Do you? Well, you may be right. But that doesn't mean Delilah wouldn't_. She turns back to Lizzy and sees a glint in her small eyes. Just a trick of the light, maybe, but Billie knows not to doubt her instincts. There is _hunger_ in Lizzy's expression. Her sleeves are frayed and her shirt is filthy; Billie tries not to look too closely at her hair. The Lizzy Stride she knew always took care of herself, as much as she could, and she wouldn't have faced someone like Billie without backup. That can only mean one thing.

 

"Did your crew toss you out?"

 

Lizzy's eyes narrow, and Billie smiles to herself. She's struck gold, it seems. "Might've done. How do you know I didn't fancy a change?"

 

"You loved that _Undine_ like it was your firstborn," Billie says easily. "But I never saw her in the harbour when we arrived. What happened? Did someone decide they wanted to keep their fingers?"

 

"Annabelle," Lizzy grunts. "And I shoulda seen it coming, it was the fucking _second time_. First Edgar Wakefield, but I got my ship back alright in the end." Something flickers in her eyes and she opens her mouth, then closes it again. Something she's hiding, or doesn't want to say. Billie shifts to the edge of her seat and grips the nearest knife hilt.

 

"There was a second mutiny?"

 

"Yeah. Didn't have _help_ with that one, and when my own crew was saying they'd gut me if I ever showed my face in Dunwall again... A lady can only take so much heartbreak, you know? So I left. Called in some favours, got myself passage to here. Figured there'd be work if I looked hard enough. And then you show up!" She throws her head back to drain her mug in several long gulps. Billie releases the hilt of her knife.

 

"Lizzy Stride, wandering vagabond. We live in strange times."

 

" _Lizzy Stride_?" Cecelia says, her eyes widening. "You mean the one people talk about, who leads the Dead Eels?"

 

"Led. Past tense," Billie says.

 

"Not yet ready to be put out to pasture though," Lizzy growls. "I ain't goin' down without a fight, and I bet you got room for someone like me on your crew. I'm _good_ , Lurk. You know I am. Keep me around, I'll show you what I'm still capable of."

 

"If you can't even bring yourself to call me _Captain_ , then I don't see how we're going to make it work." Billie sits back in her rickety wooden chair and folds her arms. Yes, she wanted a few more women aboard her ship. Yes, she knows she's unlikely to find anyone _better_ than Lizzy Stride herself. But this is a matter of pride, and it warms her heart to see the woman fidget.

 

"I heard she bites off people's fingers when they don't do what she wants," Cecelia says suddenly. She wilts under Billie's scowl, but doesn't shut up. That's progress, at least. It's good to see. "I just think we could balance things out a bit more if she came too. You're a heretic witch, the crew won't say anything bad about you in case you hear them, but me- they're not scared of me. They think I'm bad luck, I can feel it. Maybe if we had another woman or two on board with us, things might get better."

 

"I wouldn't count on it." Billie shifts her glare to the glassy-eyed woman with needle teeth and a mad smile. She's going to regret this, she can feel it. "Make it worth my while, Miss Stride."

 

"Right bossy bitch, you are," Lizzy says. She reaches underneath her open jacket, scratches vigorously at her ribs for a moment, and then fumbles for something in an inside pocket. "S'in here somewhere, I know I put it- here." With a triumphant flourish, she tosses a scrap of rolled up paper onto the table.

 

Billie prods at it suspiciously, rolling it out with all the care she'd give a live serpent. She feels Cecelia's breath on her neck as the other woman leans in close to see and whispers a soft, "Ooh, is that-"

 

"A _treasure map?_ " Billie raises her eyebrows incredulously. "You think you can buy your way onto my crew with- this?"

 

"Yeah," Lizzy slurs. "You want t' make somethin' of it?"

 

"Well, yes. Preferably treasure." They both turn to look at Cecelia, who tugs her cap low to hide the flush spreading across her cheeks. "But it's true," she mumbles. "We're not real pirates until we've had a treasure hunt, all the songs say so."

 

"Cecelia," Billie begins, and then stops. She wanted to run, didn't she? Run until she left the past far over the horizon behind her. She won't accomplish that by playing things safe, and it's not as though a... _treasure hunt_ should provide too much of a risk. They generally consist of convoluted directions to abandoned islands, and then a great deal of digging, or so Cecelia's songs have led her to believe. At the very least it'll give them a direction to sail in.

 

She turns her gaze back to the map, the barely legible scrawl of names and directions, the no-doubt inaccurate geography. Could it be real? Of all the things she learnt while following in Daud's shadow, identification of forged treasure maps was not among them.

 

"So we're going, then?" Cecelia asks, and Lizzy gives a drunk cheer, banging her empty mug down on the tabletop.

 

"Treasure for one and all, yo ho ho! How's the song go again? Somethin' about a bottle of rum, or whiskey maybe. Shame they don't got Old Dunwall here, after I asked and everything..."

 

 _She's going to get us all killed_ , Billie thinks, but she can't seem to tear her eyes away from the map in front of her. The places it depicts have odd-sounding names, nothing at all like those in Dunwall, or Gristol even. She likes that. It feels _right_ , in the same way that coming to this nameless cove felt right.

 

Maybe the treasure she finds will be her sanity. Billie laughs aloud at the thought and carefully rolls the map back up.

 

"Where'd you get this to begin with?" she asks. Lizzy ignores her, mug held out for the barmaid to refill. She takes a large swig, then another, and then at last seems to hear the question.

 

"Not sure. Didn't have it when my crew turned on me, or on the trip here. Coulda sold it for coin, maybe bought myself some fancy frills. Somethin' nice to cheer me up." She blinks down at her drink, probably wondering why it's half empty already. "Oh yeah! Was in here actually, sometime earlier. Someone dropped it by my feet, see, and he didn't grab for it fast enough either. Didn't notice, maybe. Never saw his face or nothin', just his swanky leather jacket as he was leaving. Stupid bastard."

 

"A mysterious map from Outsider knows where, leading us to Outsider knows _what_..." Billie sighs. Story of her life, really. You take the risk, or someone else will.

 

"We'll have to carry her back to the ship," Cecelia says. Lizzy's head thumps onto the table and she lies there giggling to herself. It's a sound Billie never wants to hear again.

 

"Do you have any experience with making drunken people do things?"

 

Cecelia shrugs and begins to roll the sleeves of her shirt up to elbow height. "I worked at the Hound Pits for a long time, and then Lord Pendleton came to stay, and he needed more help than all the rest put together. Don't worry, Billie. I'll get her back home safely."

 

 _It's not a home_ , Billie thinks, draping one of Lizzy's arms around her neck as Cecelia directs. _It's a ship, a temporary thing made of wood and metal, and one day it will sink forever. It can't be a home_. But all homes are temporary one way or another. She grits her teeth and balances half (only half, because Cecelia won't give her any more) of Lizzy's weight, hoisting her to her feet.

 

"Are you alright?" Cecelia asks her. Between them, Lizzy gives a loud belch and announces that she's _fine, just samplin' the joys of life, yo ho..._ and Billie seriously considers gagging her. But Cecelia's eyes are pleading, and the map in her jacket pocket presses against her chest with something like promise. Potential. Opportunity.

 

"Shut up and lift," she snaps. "Let's get this useless carcass home."

 

Cecelia smiles.

 

_"I'll do it," Billie says. She's on her stomach this time; all Delilah needs to do is add the last few touches to her painting, or so she says. Why Billie even needs to be present is a question unanswered, maybe because she didn't bother to ask. She basks in strips of sunlight as if it is her right, and relishes the knowledge that she has fooled the old man once again. Another scouting excursion, she told him. Reconnaissance. She knows how far he has fallen by the way he simply nodded and went back to his book. A biography of the Empress, once again. He probably didn't even hear her._

_"A wise choice," Delilah says from behind her canvas. She doesn't need to look at Billie while she works, not anymore, but she hasn't bothered with redressing. Maybe she knows that Billie prefers it that way. It feels more raw somehow. It makes the image sharper in her head._

_"I know." She rolls onto her back and holds her hands up to the light, wiggling her fingers and letting the sun play between the gaps. "Someone has to do it, and I'm the best. I wouldn't let anyone else take this from me. I'd kill them first."_

_"Of course you would. Has anyone worked as hard as you, fought as hard for what you have achieved? No, this victory is yours alone."_

_"I want to see the look in his eyes when I beat him. I want to know if he'll surrender gracefully, or if I'll have to cut off his head and make a trophy of it. I might do that anyway. It would be a fitting end for him."_

_Delilah laughs, high and cruel, and Billie laughs with her. Laughs until she cannot breathe, until she chokes on her humour, except that she does not; there are vines around her throat, twisting and twining like serpents. Spiked, they prick her flesh and feed on the droplets of blood that spring forth like raindrops._

_They bloom, and their colour is the red of Delilah's lips._

"It's not real, Billie. It's just the witch's dream again, and I know you're stronger than she is. The strongest of us all. Wake up, you can do it. Don't let her keep you anywhere you don't want to be. Wake up. Billie, come back."

 

She opens her eyes to lantern-light, squinting in Cecelia's direction until the other woman takes it away with a soft apology.

 

"Which one was it this time?" she asks, dimming the blue whale oil glow with the shutter and placing the lantern on Billie's ( _their_ ) desk.

 

"The roses again." Billie brings a hand to her throat, running it across her own windpipe, the bones of her neck and the heartbeat that pounds a bit too fast. "It's been the same one for weeks, I can't work out why. The dreams have never repeated themselves like that before. I wonder if she's trying to tell me something."

 

"Maybe she's desperate." Cecelia takes a blanket from her nest-bed in the corner, wrapping it around her shoulders and coming to sit at the end of Billie's bed. "That was the last time she painted you, wasn't it? That was when she was strongest and you were weakest. Do you think she might be trying to...send you back there somehow?"

 

Billie wraps her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. A pose that speaks of vulnerability, but Cecelia isn't a threat. "I'd tell you that sounds like madness were it not for the fact that I saw the extent of her powers for myself. It's possible. Anything is possible where Delilah is concerned."

 

"She can't hurt you here," Cecelia says firmly. "Thank the stars. You're free of her, and now you get to live your own life and...loot every ship you come across, and sail across the Empire on a treasure hunt. And there's nothing she can do to stop you except send you bad dreams. But those don't work."

 

"More thanks to you than anything."

 

Cecelia smiles tentatively. "I'm just glad to help."


	4. Chapter 4

They spot their first whale several days later. It breaches the shivering ocean surface without warning, a mere hundred meters away from the ship ( _Undine_ , Lizzy calls it, with such forceful fervour that a majority of the crew have conceded defeat and begun to do the same) and Billie finds herself drawn to the railing to watch. She expected it; they're heading into hunting territory and soon enough the beasts will become a daily nuisance.

 

For now, she stands stock still and allows herself the time to look. She thought them magnificent in the slaughterhouses, heartwrenchingly sad as they struggled and bled and died lonely deaths. But this is different. With a flick of its tail, the creature is gone, and Billie has to keep herself from waving back. Her first live whale. There's a metaphor here somewhere, but outside of penning reports and ransom notes Billie has never been very skilled with words.

 

"Pretty," Cecelia says. Her hands are loosely clasped on the railing; whatever else she might fear, falling overboard apparently doesn't worry her. "I've only ever seen them brought in dead by the whaling ships, or turned into oil. I didn't know they could jump like that."

 

"You'll find them less pretty if one of them lands on us," Billie grumbles, but she isn't too concerned. She heard the whale's death song in the slaughterhouse; it knew its time was up. She'd swear she saw understanding in its great yellow eyes, if doing so wouldn't make her sound madder than usual. But the creatures aren't stupid, she knows that much. They'll keep their distance.

 

"Where's Lizzy?" she asks. "She'll be disappointed to have missed this, she does love a good spectacle."

 

"Taking a turn at steering, I think."

 

"Again?"

 

"It makes her feel like she belongs," Cecelia says, and they lapse into comfortable silence again. Billie looks out into the open waters, flat horizon and cloudless sky. Not a gull in sight, though she doesn't expect any yet. They've a way to go before they reach Pandyssian seas. Any islands in the space between will be small, and hardly worth the time of exploring. The map doesn't lead to any of them.

 

"Do you think we'll find anything when we get there?" she asks, less because she expects Cecelia to have any more idea than she herself does, and more because the woman's voice is a pleasant accompaniment to the whisper of waves against their hull. "The crew will forgive a wild goose chase. There's plenty of coin to be made from Pandyssian artefacts, so it wouldn't be a total waste if the map lied. We don't even know what kind of treasure we're looking _for_."

 

"Lizzy thinks it'll be a city of gold. Streets paved in coins, and all the lamp posts solid silver. That's what she says, anyway."

 

Billie shoots her a grin. "You believe that?"

 

"I'm not _stupid_." Cecelia pushes her cap back a bit so she can peer out at the horizon. "If it's like the songs say then we'll dig up an old pirate treasure trove and it'll make us all rich. I'm not really sure what happens after that."

 

"We all get very drunk and try to stab each other in the back."

 

"Nobody's stabbing _you_ , Billie. I wouldn't let them." Cecelia's pale eyes are stern and Billie tactfully doesn't point out that while she can now manage to grip a knife correctly, the only way she'll be winning a fight is if her opponent is hogtied and blindfolded.

 

The sentiment is sweet. Not something she's had much of before. "Knowing my luck, the treasure will be locked up tight in a steel chest that we can't get open," she muses. "What an embarrassment that would be."

 

Cecelia blinks at her in surprise. "But isn't that why you kept me? To be sneaky and pick locks?"

 

"You mean you can actually-"

 

"Yes, of course!" Cecelia turns her back on the water to lean against the railing, wrapping her arms around herself. "I learnt back at the Hound Pits. It's not a very interesting story though, you don't have to-"

 

Billie gets herself comfortable against the railing. "Tell me."

 

"But it's really a bit boring-"

 

"I don't care. You've heard a great many of my stories, I want a few of yours. Think of it as an exchange."

 

Cecelia's cheeks are flushed, but she doesn't squirm under Billie's scrutiny. Hasn't for a while now, and it's a change that makes Billie inordinately happy. "Back when they were evacuating the first few districts, the pub started getting in more people who couldn't really...afford it. Some from the Flooded District, some who had been tossed out of their shops when the Watch made them close. But they'd come to see if people had word of work, and they didn't want to be seen as desperate. So Lydia wouldn't charge them in coin. She'd get them to fix things, or carry up new barrels from the cellar, that sort of thing. And if she wasn't looking, I'd sometimes ask for payment in songs. Someone wrote me a poem once, it was the loveliest thing." She smiles to herself. "I must have lost it somewhere. Might have left it in the apartment. Anyway, one man who showed up had been a locksmith. Wasn't anymore, but he'd taught himself all these new tricks to survive, and he had me lock the cellar door, then showed me how to unlock it without keys. It was very clever. Shame he never came back."

 

_If the Watch didn't catch him, the plague did_ , Billie thinks. _Or he smartened up and joined a gang. I suppose it's possible_. "So you can take care of locked chests for us? That's useful to know."

 

"With the right tools I can." Cecelia fishes a leather-wrapped bundle out of a jacket pocket. "I asked one of the crewmembers to find me some, back where we met Lizzy. He didn't seem to think it was strange or anything. But I guess we're pirates, so maybe it's not."

 

Billie finds herself speechless for a moment. How did she miss _this_ , of all things? Too busy with her dreams and that blasted map to notice what was going on around her. Daud would have had a great many things to say about that. Though come to think of it, he wasn't any better near the end. She needs to sharpen up, and fast, before she winds up like him.

 

"You're bolder than I'd realised," she says at last.

 

Cecelia tucks her lockpicks away, carefully avoiding Billie's eyes. "I just wanted to be useful to you. I know I can't really watch your back in a fight, and I don't know anything about navigating, or working out directions, or tide patterns. All I do well is clean. So I changed that, because I don't want to be _expendable_ like I was at the Hound Pits. I never want to be expendable ever again."

 

Billie finds her voice somewhere, enough to say roughly, "You are _not_ expendable." After that it seems easier to go back to staring out at the water in silence, so she does. Cecelia turns around to join her, cheeks still flushed and a big smile spreading across her face.

 

They stay that way for a long while, until a second whale breaches and dives in the distant, fins flashing in the sunlight. This time Billie waves as it vanishes. A moment later, Cecelia does too.

 

Evening finds them at the prow of the ship, seated cross-legged on a tattered blanket Cecelia procured from somewhere below decks. Between them, Lizzy shuffles a deck of cards.

 

"What are we playing?" Cecelia asks anxiously. "I've never understood the rules of Nancy; Lydia said I was too stupid to. But I also never had any spare coin to bet, so I guess it was a blessing."

 

"Shut up and let me deal, would you? I'm tellin' your fortune. All you have to do is listen." Lizzy begins to deal the cards and pauses. "Shit. Wait, are you supposed to do the shuffling?"

 

"You don't _know_?" Billie snaps, reaching into the middle of the circle to tap one of the dealt cards. "Setting aside the fact that this is a waste of time, what's the point if you don't know how to do it?"

 

"What, like you had anything better to do? Can't just leave you two mooning over each other, it's fucking pathetic and the crew start feeling neglected." Lizzy picks the cards back up again and shoves them into Billie's lap. "There you go, you bossy bit of hagfish spawn, shuffle 'em up for me."

 

Billie doesn't rise to the bait. She takes the cards in hand and shuffles them clumsily; they're too large, too unwieldy, and she can't seem to get the trick of it right. Lizzy seemed to turn them about as well, so apparently she wants some of them upside down. This is foolishness. Her powers are one thing, she knows where they come from and how they work. _Divination_ is a whole other kettle of fish. It's useless. Nobody controls her fate, and certainly not a deck of cards.

 

"Done," she announces, holding the deck out to Lizzy. "Now what?"

 

The other woman shrugs. "Deal 'em, I guess. Or, wait a second, give 'em to Fire-hair over there, she can deal."

 

Cecelia swallows loudly, but takes the cards Billie gives her. "How do I-"

 

"Don't seem to matter much. I've seen it done all kinds of ways, and you don't need to use them all. Just make up a shape you fancy and do that."

 

"Right." Cecelia stares down at the space in the middle of the circle, her lips moving in silent thought. It's a full minute before she deals, but when she does her movements are sure. The cards take on a pyramid shape, ten in total. Cecelia goes to lay the rest aside and pauses. After a moment she adds an eleventh card, off to the side. "Done."

 

"Huh. Thought you'd just line 'em up, myself," Lizzy says. "Doesn't matter though, this'll do."

 

_Eleven,_ Billie thinks, frowning down at the cards. _Is that significant? Should I understand what she means by it?_ She thought she did, until the eleventh card. "Ten Loyalists and...one more? Do you count the child-Empress?" she asks, and sees Cecelia's eyes light up.

 

"I didn't think you'd have remembered that. And I guess you could, but I didn't really mean to include her. Eleven is for the Outsider. He arrived with Corvo, though nobody would ever admit it."

 

"That's a stupid thing to do, then," Billie begins to say, before catching herself. What does it matter? They're just cards. And the Outsider never comes when called anyway, or she'd have had no need of Daud's second-hand powers. She certainly did her fair share of calling. She wasn't the only one. "I doubt it really matters, given that none of us know what they'll mean once we turn them over."

 

"I can try it! You watch, I bet they'll say you get drowned in the next big storm and I get to keep your ship and swanky hat." Lizzy turns over the first card irritably. "It's a- huh. Not actually sure. Either of you know what that is? A cheese, maybe?"

 

"It says _The Moon_ right there, you fool," Billie snaps. "And you can't be hungry, I don't underfeed my crew."

 

"I'm a growing girl, I need my grub."

 

"Will you read the cards, Lizzy?" Cecelia interrupts before a fight can break out. "I just- I guess I want to know what they mean now they're all laid out." Her eyes dart to the eleventh card off to the side and then back to _The Moon_. "Is this one bad?"

 

Placated, Lizzy lifts the card and gives a knowing nod that only makes Billie want to punch her. "Seen this one a few times, yeah, but it's a strange one. Bang-bang explained it to me. Something about dreams, I reckon, or illusions. Nightmares, things that scare you. That mean anything to either of you?"

 

_That'll be my card, then_ , Billie thinks, avoiding the concerned look she can feel Cecelia shooting her. She's fine. The dreams, the _memories_ , they'll stop eventually. If she can just run far enough... Not that it matters. This is _stupid_ and she should know better than to give it any credence. "We all dream," she says out loud. "And I suspect we all have nightmares we'd rather not share. Next card."

 

Lizzy mumbles something containing the word _bossy_ , but she moves to the second row and turns over the card on the right.

 

"Oh look, it's _Death_. Well isn't that just splendid."

 

"Does that mean we're going to sink?" Cecelia asks, horrified, and Lizzy throws her head back to laugh. Her filed teeth gleam in the sinking sunlight.

 

"Nothing like that, scaredy-cat. And it's in the past, I reckon, so it wouldn't matter anyway. It's more like a change that made you do something. Might be a death, might be lots of deaths, but not always."

 

"Oh. Well, that could be a lot of things."

 

They sink into brief silence, and Billie can't speak for the other two but she spends it numbering the influences that forced her onto a smuggling ship out of Dunwall. Lies, treachery, witchcraft. And death. All the Whalers they lost in the Overseer assault, those are all hers to bear. One day she might even come to terms with it.

 

To her right, Cecelia whispers a barely audible _Lydia_ , and Billie reaches over to touch her knee. "Any chance you can make the next one a bit more cheerful?"

 

"Right, yeah." Lizzie recovers from whatever private stupour she'd sunk herself in and reaches for the third card. "This one's meant to be a bit better, something about the future. Should've paid more attention to Bang-bang, but I never thought he'd end up- ah, fuck it." She turns the card. "Huh. _Three of Cups_." The picture is a cheerful one, some kind of celebration from the looks of it.

 

"Let me guess," Billie says. "We're going to get very drunk."

 

"Might do. This one's friendship, finding new companions and working together so you find treasure and get rich. I remember it. The day always seemed to go better for the Eels when this one showed up, or so we used to say."

 

"There's nothing about _treasure_ in there!"

 

"Either shut your gob or let me keep going. They're not exact, you have to use a bit of damn imagination, don't you?" Lizzy moves into the third row and tosses the card on the right onto its back. "There. _The Empress_. Why don't you tell me what it means, eh miss Clever?"

 

"She's _Captain_ Clever, actually," Cecelia corrects, and doesn't flinch as Lizzy's spiked grin is directed her way. "So what does it mean?"

 

"No idea. Can't be that important though, I vote we pretend it didn't happen." She tosses the _Empress_ card aside and turns the next one over. _Seven of Wands_ , Billie reads in the split second before Lizzy snorts and shoves it out of the way as well. "Don't look at me like that, it's a lot to remember. Never had much time for it myself, but it helped pass the slow afternoons. Might have been a good idea to ask that witch lady back at the pub for an explanation or two before I stole her deck. Hindsight's a bitch."

 

_Five of Wands_ is the next to go, fluttering in the breeze until Cecelia snatches it out of the air and puts it with the other two.

 

Billie makes a grab for the next card when it starts to look like Lizzy might be getting sidetracked. It's only a matter of time before she wanders off to find a bottle of something without any pronounceable name and drinks herself into a violent, giggling mess. That's a problem Billie is aware she'll need to solve at some point, as Captain, but for the moment all she can do is dangle the treasure map in front of Lizzy's face and tell her to stay _focused._ And that's not something that will work forever. Daud would surely have snapped by now, but Billie is determined to do better. Somehow.

 

_Strength_ , says the card, and she doesn't need Lizzy's grumbled, "Self-explanatory. _Next!_ " to tell her what she should see in it. A shiver runs down her spine. Coincidence, to be sure, but then her eyes drift to the eleventh card at the side of Cecelia's pyramid and she can't quite convince herself.

 

"But what kind?" she says, almost to herself. "And when? Past, present, future? Should I lift heavier weights each day, run laps of the ship, climb the rigging, or is it too late for that? And if it's in the future, what happens if I'm not strong enough?"

 

"Does it need to just be you alone?" Cecelia asks. Her fingers twitch in her lap, but the rest of her is still, hunched towards the cards in front of her. "You shuffled, but I dealt. Couldn't it be a combined strength? All three of us, even." She gives Lizzy an uncertain look.

 

"So long as it gets me all the coin and drink I could ask for, I'll be all the _strength_ you need," Lizzy says. Billie eyes her skinny frame and doesn't comment.

 

Cecelia breaks the silence this time. "So even if the treasure map isn't real, I guess we'll have found something useful. That happens in the songs too. Strangers who work together, and at the end they find-"

 

"If you say something trite like 'the treasure of friendship', I'll hang you over the prow until you squeal, Fire-hair," Lizzy says flatly. Cecelia cringes but doesn't apologise.

 

"It's true though," she insists in a voice that only trembles slightly. "It's always been safer for me to be alone. I know I can't protect anyone, sometimes not even myself. All I've ever been able to do is hide, and I didn't mind that. But things are different now. I'd fight. If I had to, that is, though I know I'd not last very long."

 

Billie becomes suddenly aware that she never properly removed her hand from Cecelia's knee. It rests where she left it, comfortable and undemanding. Forgotten, because it felt so natural. She looks at Cecelia and for the first time in their...acquaintance, Billie feels remorse. A stab of guilt on top of it. This woman has no place aboard a pirate ship, surrounded by people who scare her, dragged through crowded pubs and brutal sea battles by a heretic witch whose mind is not always her own. Cecelia should be back in Dunwall. Somewhere safe, far from anyone who might want to harm her. She should not feel the need to fight for anyone. But she does, and it's Billie's fault.

 

They can't turn back now. She vowed to herself that she would never go back, and that vow must stand.

 

_Strength_ , Billie thinks, her fingers tightening on Cecelia's knee. _I need to be stronger so you never have to fight. Too many died because of me, and that's not a list you're going to join._

_Time to stop running_.

 

The wind is back, a sudden gust that whips Billie's dark hair about her face and tugs at clothes and the blanket they're seated on. The cards lift from their places and flutter about their heads like butterflies. Instinctively, Billie reaches out. The back of her left hand flares with comforting heat. One of the cards glows green and soars into her grasp just as the rest are blown over the prow and into the water.

 

"Damn," Billie mutters. She ignores Lizzy's outbreak of sarcastic applause and turns instead to Cecelia. But there is no fear in the other woman's face, no judgement or revulsion. Her eyes light up, awed by what is in essence little more than a parlour trick. _I could show you so much more_ , Billie thinks. _You'd never be afraid for your life again, if you saw the things I am capable of. Maybe I'll show you._ She's not enough of a fool to assume her powers will stick around forever; the very fact that they still do is a miracle in itself. Would it be arrogance, to assume they stand for Daud's forgiveness?

"What was that?" Cecelia asks.

 

"Just a Tethering. Nothing impressive," Billie says, but it does nothing to dim the warmth in the other woman's eyes. "Here, seeing as I went to all the effort of saving it from a short and soggy end. What's our last card?" She hands it over and Cecelia's eyebrows rise.

 

"But it's- oh."

 

”Urgh," Lizzy interjects. "No surprises there, at least. You need me to spell it out for you or do you think you can do that on your own?"

 

_The Lovers_ , the card reads. Billie schools her face into a total lack of expression, but it doesn't change the slight shake of Cecelia's fingers on the card's edges. She can't unnotice it, or the way Cecelia hunches in on herself when there is no immediate response. And there must be one. No more running. However selfish it might be to stay.

 

"I did say that it was a foolish thing to bring the Outsider into this," she says. "His presences makes things...unexpected. Impossible occurrences start to happen." She didn't mean for it to sound quite so reproachful. Chances are the black-eyed bastard would still have found time to toy with their minds even if Cecelia hadn't outright invited him in. He'll never show himself to Billie; of this she is now certain, and relieved. But that alone doesn't grant them immunity to his tricks.

 

"I'm sorry, " Billie begins again. "I didn't intend- here. You look after it, I'd only get it smeared with blood." She takes the card and leans in close ( _enough to smell the soap-scent on Cecelia's neck, and something warmer that can only be- her_ ). The card is tucked into one of the inside pockets of Cecelia's jacket. It would have been more appropriate had there been one over her heart, but there is not, so it ends up pressed against Cecelia's liver instead.

 

Her cheeks have gone bright red by the time Billie withdraws, warmth blooming against her insides. Sentiment. Dangerous sentiment, but Billie is strong. She'll turn her blade against anyone that seeks to harm them, and she will not lose. "I'd have torn it in half so we could share, but I'm not sure the symbolism would have quite carried over," she says, a little awkwardly. Not her fault. She never trained for _this_.

 

"That's alright, I...think I understand," Cecelia replies. In the background Lizzy mutters something about women who coo like lovebirds, and Billie silently vows to put a dead fish in amongst her blankets sometime soon. It won't be the first. And while Cecelia has always remained a neutral party in their battles, Billie thinks she sees a change coming on the horizon.

 

She'll be ready for it.


	5. Chapter 5

_Once again, the attic room. A mattress under her back, and sunlight filtering through broken beams to blind her. Billie sits up and finds Delilah at her easel, mixing colours._

_"How I've missed you," she says without looking up. Her fingers are paint-flecked as usual, this time in shades of red. "Won't you come back to me, Billie? Come to the Manor and I will welcome you with open arms. Think of what we could achieve together! We could reclaim what was taken from us, and none would dare stand in our way. Think of that. Are you truly happy to live as an outcast? You are more suited to leadership, authority. You could rule."_

_Billie feels anger flare in her chest. "You really think I'd come and help you, after the dreams you've inflicted on me?"_

_"Memories," Delilah corrects gently. "Nothing you didn't keep close to your heart where I could access it. I appreciated that, thank you."_

_"I keep a great many things close to my heart these days, but none of them involve you. And you know that. If you're desperate enough to come crying to me, then whatever Daud did must have been effective. I'm glad." Billie leans forward to spit at Delilah's feet, grinning savagely. "And I hope the old man found peace somewhere, I really do. If he defeated you, then he deserves it."_

_Delilah's eyes narrow. "Will you run from me, Billie Lurk? Hide from me? Do you think I could not find you if it suited me? Maybe you'll take a new name to help yourself sleep at night, as if that would stop me-"_

_"Quiet, witch," Billie says, and Delilah's mouth snaps shut in shock. The expression is one Billie hasn't seen before; it fuels the raging fire in her chest. "I don't need anything more from you. I don't want anything more, and I'm not coming back to save you from Daud. All you have is dreams, and those aren't enough to control me anymore."_

_She stands. The easels around her dissolve as she rises, wooden beams and sunlight fading into nothingness. Fists clenched, she lifts her chin and meets Delilah's eyes. "This is goodbye and good riddance. I'm done with you." And then, as the witch herself begins to fade in the foggy haze between sleep and wakening, Billie says, "I've already chosen a new name, one that fits me far better than the last. I am Captain Billie Lurk. Come find me if you dare; I'll tear your skin off and make myself a flag for my ship. Just you try it. COME AND FIND ME."_

This time there is no lantern-light to blind her when she wakes; the whale oil lamp is in its usual place on the desk, dimmed so as to only give off the faintest blue glow. Cecelia tosses and turns in her blanket nest, and after a moment Billie gets up to go and shake her.

 

"Cecelia," she says. Her voice isn't as rough as it usually is after a nightmare; she wonders if she made any sound. Maybe not. This time, she was in control. "Wake up, it's only a dream. You have nothing to fear here. I wouldn't allow it. Wake up."

 

She does, blinking up at Billie in confusion, then understanding. "What- oh no, did I disturb you? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

 

"Bad dreams?"

 

"Not like yours." Cecelia sits up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Not even bad, now I think about it. I was back at the Hound Pits with Lydia and Wallace and Callista. Emily was drawing, I think we were supposed to be minding her. There were cards, we were playing...something. It wasn't important. All of us being together, that was the important thing. And I knew Wallace and Lydia were going to die, I kept wondering if I should tell them, but it wouldn't have changed what the Admiral did. At least they were happy."

 

"Keep them that way," Billie tells her. "Remember them as happy, and the rest is void. It's the kindest thing you can do for them now."

 

"I guess."

 

They sit there in blue-tinged silence, both on the cusp of words but neither willing to lead. Cecelia pushes errant red hairs behind her ears and stares down at her knees while Billie hunts for ways to comfort. Only it's not comfort; they are neither of them distraught, and she can just make out a small, contented smile playing in the corners of Cecelia's mouth.

 

"I dreamed of Delilah again," Billie says carefully, trying out the words to see how they feel. "I told her to leave me alone, or I'd string her up from the mast to be our new flag. It might be a vain hope, but I have a feeling I won't be seeing her again. You were right. She wasn't strong enough to fight me."

 

"Good," Cecelia says. She reaches for one of Billie's hands, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. "I'm very proud of you. I know it probably doesn't matter all that much, but I am. Being brave is the hardest thing in the world when you're scared."

 

"Aren't you cold?" Billie asks abruptly. It's a sudden change of topic, but the intent behind it has been building up for a long time. She can be very patient when patience is required; in this moment, it is not. She brings Cecelia's hand to her lips (chilled, like the rest of her. The nights are cold in Pandyssian waters) and blows on it.

 

"I'll be fine, don't worry," Cecelia insists.

 

"You'd be warmer if you shared with me."

 

She tugs on Cecelia's wrist and the other woman comes without question, shedding her layers of ragged blankets onto the floor as she rises.

 

"I wasn't sure you'd ever ask," she says with the ghost of  smile, and Billie leans in to kiss the corners of her lips, one then the other.

 

"I had to be sure it was me asking," she says simply.

 

There is no blind stumble onto the small bed, no tearing of clothing or wild, impatient lust. Billie waits for Cecelia to choose a side ( _and breathes a silent sigh of relief when she wants the wall. Further from the door means Billie can be the first to greet a threat, seize her sword from its place on the floor at her bedside and buy them both another day in each other's lives_ ) and climbs in beside her. Strange, how easy it is.

 

Cecelia is the first to reach across the mere inches of mattress space between them, tickling Billie's abdomen with her fingertips.

 

"You have _muscles_ ," she explains to Billie's quizzical look, then giggles as Billie returns the gesture in kind.

 

"And _you_ are as soft as a fatted calf. How do you manage it? With all the running around and cleaning things, you must be just as fit as me." She grazes her knuckles over Cecelia's navel and feels the other woman shiver. _Good_.

 

"Sorry," Cecelia whispers. "I've always been- oh. _Oh,"_ she breathes against Billie's mouth, thighs parting under the brush of Billie's fingers.

 

"I like you that way," Billie tells her between kisses. She takes the other woman's lower lip between her teeth (red, wind-chapped and slick with saliva), flicking her tongue across it to watch her shiver. "I like a great many things about you, and I can't work out _why_ ," she drags her fingers through the hair between Cecelia's legs, "but I'm in no hurry to find out."

 

Cecelia's eyes flutter closed as Billie slides down her body, mouth pausing over her neck, collarbones, the hollow at the base of her throat. She twists into a tongue over a nipple, running her hands through her own hair to keep from tugging on Billie's. Her skin reddens under kisses, a neat row of pink welts trailing down her stomach and past her navel until she twitches all of a sudden and tries to sit up.

 

"Oh no, you don't need to," she begins, "I mean, I'd never expect anything you didn't want to, if you didn't like the thought-"

 

"Shut up," Billie tells her kindly. "I _do_ like the thought, maybe almost as much as you will. Hush. Or not, whatever pleases you. Wake everyone aboard the ship if you want. I can always use something more to swagger about."

"No, I'll be quiet, I'll be silent as a mouse-" but she makes a liar of herself in seconds, arching against Billie's tongue with a soft whine.

 

Soap, musk; her taste is a heady warmth for Billie to bask in, lips open and tongue soft, teasing. The effect is immediate, Cecelia quivering helplessly beneath her. Billie glances up and finds her eyes screwed closed. It won't do; she won't stand for being shut out, not now, not when Cecelia's hands could be put to better use than tearing the sheets apart.

 

She licks a long stripe between Cecelia's legs, repeats the gesture more slowly and pauses to dance her tongue wherever it makes Cecelia twitch the most. Tastes her and moans low and loud, so she'll know this isn't an _inconvenience_ , not something she feels duty-bound to do. The sound has Cecelia shivering. She gapes up at the wooden ceiling and makes high-pitched sounds in time with the flick and flutter of Billie's tongue.

 

"Here," Billie stops long enough to say, ignoring Cecelia's protests. She taps the other woman's thighs where they lie spread open on either side of her, tugs on one of Cecelia's ankles until she understands and lifts her feet to rest against Billie's upper back. "Isn't that better?"

 

"How do you _know_ these things?" Cecelia asks, baffled. Her cheeks are a brilliant red, brighter even than her hair. " _Where_ did-"

 

"Leave your Captain a few secrets, dearest," Billie tells her, nipping the skin of her thighs until the questions become pleas and one of Cecelia's hands fists itself in her hair. _Better_. _Show me how this feels for you, show me what drives you wildest._ She brings her hands into play, spreading Cecelia open with her fingertips, sliding the tip of her tongue inside her and licking until she wails.

 

She's _beautiful_ like this. Thighs trembling against Billie's cheeks, Cecelia's feet dig bruises into Billie's shoulders where they press too hard. Not intentional, not something she can help. A flattering loss of control; shame the marks won't be visible. She'd wear them with a great deal of pride, and no small amount of smugness on top of that.

 

There is no protest when she replaces her tongue with a finger, then a second. Cecelia is slick, _tight_ , and Billie curves her fingers playfully as she slides them back out. Cecelia makes a sound like she might be dying, and Billie has to smile at the thought that they might be waking the crew. No doubt the only one brave enough to say anything will be Lizzy, who won't bother to hide her irritation. Not that Billie will care. Come tomorrow she fully expects to be walking on air and completely beyond her crew's petty annoyance.

 

_Look at her_ , she thinks, and thrusts her fingers into Cecelia's heat a little harder, just to see her eyes flutter closed. _Look at her, she's perfect. I'll lay her down on a bed of coin and gems and fuck her, because I can. Because she wants me to. It'll be uncomfortable and impractical but we'll do it so we can say we have, and laugh about it drunk for years to come. There'll be years. Years to love without boundaries or rules, and I'm going to take every single moment and make it mine. Like she is._

 

"Billie," Cecelia gasps, "I'm- _oh, oh, yes_ -" and she sobs up to the ceiling, mouthing Billie's name until her shaking ceases.

 

Billie withdraws her fingers and licks them clean languorously where Cecelia can see her do it. The other woman's eyes widen, and then she giggles.

 

"You're- oh, I don't think I know any words for it. But that was, um..."

 

"I know," Billie says agreeably. "Isn't it?"

 

"Will you teach me how?" Cecelia's cheeks are still flushed, as are her thighs, but her eyes have a sparkle to them that speaks of mischief. "I learn quickly, I promise."

 

Billie crawls up the bed to take Cecelia's place, sprawled over the pillows with her hands resting behind her head. "Do you? Well, I suppose I'll just have to see about that. I can be a harsh taskmistress at times, but you've probably realised that."

 

"That's fine," Cecelia says, smiling. "We'll just have to practice a lot."


	6. Chapter 6

The map lies unrolled on her desk, just out of reach. Billie looks at it through a bleary haze of sleep and finds that she no longer wonders. Oh, it would be nice to uncover some long-hidden pirate treasure to make their fortunes, but if all else fails they can probably board a few merchant vessels. There are always madmen willing to risk the trip to Pandyssia and back for the sake of the hefty profits it ensures them. Failing that, the whaling ships would do. Billie wouldn't mind seeing a few of them sunk.

 

If one day her powers fail her, it might be nice to have some form of loyalty to fall back on. Coin will achieve what heretic magic cannot.

_In her dreams, Captain Billie Lurk stands at the prow of her ship and adjusts her hat. Drawing her sword, she holds it aloft so the sun can shine off its blade. Let the quarry see her coming; she'll never run again._

_"Cannons at the ready!" she shouts, and the wind whips her crews' shouted responses past her ears. At the helm, Lizzy throws her head back and laughs. A mad sound. A wild, inhuman sound; Billie is tempted to join her. She imagines she can smell fear on the wind, mixed and mingled with gunpowder and whale oil._

_Cecelia will be belowdecks, preparing a room for the wounded. She listened when Billie banned her from joining the boarding, listened and found another way to make herself useful. It's a solution they're both satisfied with._

_The merchant vessel is slow, weighted down by cargo and the extra guards its owners thought would keep it safe on the open seas. Fools, all of them. Her quarry is ripe for the taking. A gem in the open sands. A pearl exposed._

_And the world is an oyster, for those strong enough to harvest it. Billie waves her blade and prepares for the reaping._


End file.
